Jolly Green Peppers

Today, I spent most of my free time getting as much independent legal advice as I could (re: neighbour dispute ... see yesterday). Guess what? I contacted four different sources and they ALL told me the same thing, namely that:

1) The hedge in question looks to be a joint hedge, in which case, we both own it (surprise surprise), meaning that they can cut back their side to the boundary line, and we can do likewise. They are not permitted to damage any growth on our side of the boundary.

2) They can fell their tree and kill the stump, but they cannot pull up the roots on our side of the boundary, or step one millimeter onto our property without our permission.

3) Any deliberate damage caused to our property would be deemed as a criminal act.

4) They are not permitted to touch the fence that we erected earlier in the year on our property and they have no right to insist that it comes down before they erect their fence.

5) They have no right to insist that we keep the hedge a good paths width away from their new fence.

In general, what we do on our side of the boundary is our business and if they interfere, they are in the wrong.

Try telling that to them ... we are the "arseholes" in their opinion.

So .... they stick to the law, and we stick to the law. There is one law for us both. Their builder will be informed shortly.

All this hassle makes me sick.

We are still happy for them to build their fence and for them to fell their tree .... but they must NOT destroy any of the vegetation or step foot on our property. They can cut the roots of their tree along the boundary line, but the roots that will be spreading into our garden are to remain undisturbed. We have a garage building very close to their tree, and we have been advised that it would be very unwise to disturb those roots, otherwise the foundations to our garage could be damaged. We suspect that their true purpose of digging up the tree roots that might have spread over the boundary into our garden, is so they can destroy the vegetation (ivy and others) that are growing above their tree roots.

Returning to the more normal world .... these are our greenhouse peppers. We have some 25 plants with 10 or 15 peppers on each plant. They are coming along nicely.

I don't get as much time for the nicer side of life as I would want. There is so much in life to enjoy, but not at the moment.